It started, as many good ideas do, with a moment of quiet observation. Line Kloster Pedersen was on a run around the lakes in Copenhagen, a route where the city’s concrete infrastructure meets pockets of nature, when she found herself looking down. She noticed the soil, specifically the way the underground root network of fungi, known as mycelium, binds the soil together with a natural, resilient strength.
At that moment, a question formed that would eventually consume her life. If nature has its own binder, why are we still building roads with oil?
For over a century, the recipe for asphalt has remained virtually unchanged. It relies on bitumen, the thick, black residue left over from crude oil distillation, to bind stones together. It is a process, requiring temperatures of up to 400 °C to refine and 165°C to pave. But Line, a biotechnologist with a background in fermentation, wondered if she could replace that fossil fuel with the same fungal network she saw binding the soil.
Building the Founder Mindset
Line built her work ethic through academic research and entrepreneurship. This grounded approach would prove vital, because Visibuilt was not her first venture into the world of fermentation.
Before she ever thought about roads, Line co-founded MATR Foods in 2021, a startup focused on creating sustainable food products through fungal fermentation. It was here, serving as both CEO and later CTO, that she learned the realities of scaling a biotech company. She learned that having a great scientific concept is only half the battle. You also need to navigate production logistics, secure funding, and build a team that can execute the vision.
From Kitchen Experiments to Global Recognition
The early days of Visibuilt didn’t take place in a high-tech facility. They happened in her kitchen and later a home-made laboratory in a tiny janitors’ storage room. Armed with a pressure cooker and bags of agricultural waste like sawdust, she began testing whether she could “grow” a road binder.
The science she developed, visiBIT, is a radical departure from bitumen. It works at room temperature, potentially reducing energy consumption by 90%. This breakthrough has not gone unnoticed.
What started as a kitchen experiment has rapidly gained international acclaim. Visibuilt was recently named to the prestigious Norrsken Impact/100 list (2025), resulting in Line and her company being featured on the billboards of Times Square in New York. The invention has furthermore been highlighted in a news article in Nature Biotechnology (January 2025).
Line was named Climate Entrepreneur of the Year (Klimaboost 2023) in Denmark, and critically, she won the Nordic Asphalt Research and Development Prize (NVF 2023). This specific award was a turning point early on. It signaled that the conservative construction industry wasn’t just tolerating her idea; they were actively embracing it.
Photo Credit: Kasper Løftegaard
Line made the decision to step back from the microscope. Recognizing that it’s crucial to build a strong team with the right competencies and to trust the people you hire to take the leadership in their domain, she hired a Head of Science, Oleksii Rebrov, who is now Co-Founder and CSO. This allowed her to focus on strategy, leading to a successful €1.3 million funding round to push the technology towards the first pilot tests with customers.
The Road Ahead
The transition from a petri dish to a paved road is far from simple. Despite many hurdles, Visibuilt leads the way, and the path forward is clear. Visibuilt has partnered with industry giants NCC and Munck Asfalt to test the material in real-world conditions. The company aims to roll out the technology on bike paths and parking lots initially, proving the material’s durability before targeting public roads.
More recently, Visibuilt has taken a concrete step toward everyday applications by entering a strategic partnership with the Danish concrete paver manufacturer IBF to bring mycelium-based pavers called visiPAVER to market. The collaboration allows Line and her team to test their bio-based binder in modular paving products, where durability can be proven in sidewalks, squares and outdoor surfaces before scaling to full road projects. It fits her stepwise approach to innovation. Start where the risk is lower, learn fast, and then move toward heavier traffic and larger infrastructure.
“The idea is only the first step on the entrepreneurial journey. It is the execution behind it that brings true innovation to market” Line has said. This sentiment is what formed Visibuilt right from the beginning and what continues to guide the team of now 19 people in their journey to make asphalt and concrete pavers a lot greener.
Article by Irendra Wijewardana
